


Russians in Detroit

by Nigg



Series: Let Me Dance With You For Eternity [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Dancing, Denial of Feelings, Insecurity, M/M, POV Yuri Plisetsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 21:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12756822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nigg/pseuds/Nigg
Summary: Yuri Plisetsky is a ballet dancer at the Bolshoi Theatre Academy. In order to prepare for their performance of an American Ballet, they have a trip to America to watch the Detroit Ballet Company's version of the show and Yuri meets the soloist of the American Company, Yuuri Katsuki.Cut scene from my Victuuri Ballet AU "On pointed feet and broken dreams"! It can be read even as a one-shot mini fic.





	Russians in Detroit

**Author's Note:**

> I was struggling to write the next chapter of my main fic "On pointed feet and broken dreams" because it's going to be featuring Yuri Plisetsky's POV and he is the furthest character from my personality among them. So I decided to go for a shock treatment and write a cut scene completely from his POV, featuring his first meeting with Yuuri.  
> I hope that you'll enjoy it! If you like this and you haven't already, try and check the original fic "On pointed feet and broken dreams", it's updated weekly. Let me know in the comments what you think, I will love to hear from you!

Other than the main Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet Academy had many other buildings in Moscow, where different levels of classes were being held, from preparatory activities to intensive programmes to build up or improve the Ballet technique of students from all around the World. They were known to be the best and they didn’t lose any chance they had to show it.

In a small room in one of those buildings, a little boy was rehearsing his choreography. The wall in front of him was covered in mirrors and along the opposite one, there was a _barre_ , giving the place the unmistakable look of a dance classroom that the boy had associated to safety and home.

The choreography was boring. His teacher insisted he did a version of the Mazurka from Coppelia, which was too easy. He had won the Junior World Championship with it, but he hadn’t been able to show his true capabilities. The others there were a bunch of kids, they were no competitions. Stupid Victor already performed as Franz in the Company’s “The Nutcracker” when he was his age and he was getting the Mazurka, of all things. 

“Yuri, you are supposed to express happiness in this _piéce_ , wipe that annoyed look off your face.”

Yuri grumbled, starting again from the top and glaring at Lilia, but he couldn’t stop feeling angry about that. He knew he could be so much better than everyone else if they’d just let him practice with the seniors or the Company. But they won’t. They won’t let him choose his own variations and they won’t let him add more advanced moves to the choreography he was stuck with. Most of all, they kept having him train with those annoying kids, with their smiling little faces and their smiling happy parents that came picking them up at the end of the week. Among the Russians, he was the only one who spent the weekends in the Academy. Not that he cared. He was rarely alone because there were always some of the seniors that wanted to have additional rehearsing hours and the externals, that came there to perfect their techniques for a period, but the firsts didn’t pay him much mind, except maybe for stupid Victor, and the seconds were gone the moment Yuri started to open up to them. They were unreliable, pretending to care about him and then leaving. He hated them. After the first few attempts when he was a kid, he stopped reaching out to them and he shut himself in completely. Sometimes his grandfather came to see him, and in those moments he felt happy and loved, but they never lasted.

Lilia sighed.

“Come on, Yuri, let’s go back to the class, Yakov and I have an announcement to make.”

Yuri realized he was standing in the final pose of his dance. His mind hadn’t been in the choreography at all, but somehow he had finished.

“Fine” he answered, before gathering up his things and following his teacher towards the bigger room where his other classmates were practicing. 

They were all sitting on the floor and Lilia and Yakov were standing in front of them, holding some papers.

“As you know, our Company this year is producing his own version of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the American Ballet.” Yakov started and they nodded. Yuri could see that the kids were getting excited all around him, bouncing with anticipation.

“We decided to make a small audition among the younger students of our Academy to select the members of Oberon’s Court. You will have to play some group choreographies as well as stay on scene for some reciting parts. Your audition will be held next week, from today till then you will learn a small part of the opening dance, at the same time we’ll start auditioning for the other roles and as soon as Oberon and Puck are chosen, they will rehearse with you. This is going to be an amazing opportunity for those of you who aim to work here in the future.”

Yuri knew that stupid Victor was going to play Oberon. The press had spent days talking about how he fitted the role, how he would be beautiful and ethereal with his silver hair, the green and blue wings and the golden crown. It made Yuri want to throw up. He’d rather die than play the little fairy in stupid Victor’s Court, but if he wanted to enter the Company, he needed to be in this.

After some other practical information about the times and places for the rehearsal and for the auditions, Yakov left and Lilia handed out the papers she was holding. Yuri grabbed one with disinterest but reading what it was about made him curious. It was an application form for a trip to America. He turned to Lilia with interest as she was explaining some details:

“If you intend to take part in the audition, I suggest you consider going on this trip as well. Since ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ originally was an American Ballet, as the Director already told you, we decided to offer you the chance to watch their version before taking part in ours. The Detroit Ballet Company has a really good cast and it’s performing right now. Since the style of the Ballet match theirs more than ours and it’s very different from what you are used to doing here, you could learn something from them and it would be good for your own execution in the future. Think about it and call your parents if you are interested, the secretary of the Theatre will collect your filled forms.”

Yuri had traveled outside Europe sometimes for the Championship, but he had never been to America, plus he had never had the chance to see an actual Ballet outside of Russia, just the exhibitions that were held after competitions, but they weren’t the same thing.

After calling his grandfather, who agreed to sign up the form for him, Yuri applied both for the audition and for the trip.

He hated the fairies’ choreography, if possible, even more than the Mazurka, but he endured it. When stupid Victor was obviously chosen for Oberon he started practicing with them, but they were having troubles looking for someone to play Puck. Apparently, they wanted someone who could find complete syntony with him and he was being troublesome in making a choice. Yuri couldn’t understand him. He had everything a dancer could want, he was loved, rich, popular, was the main soloist of the best Company in the World, had his own apartment and didn’t have to live in the Academy’s dormitories and could pretty much do everything he wanted without losing his spot there. And yet he always had that hangdog look. If it wasn’t that his apartment was the only place where Yuri could escape to when he couldn’t stand the other people around him anymore, he would have hated him too. But somehow stupid Victor appeared to act friendly with him and Yuri could take advantage of that, even if he surely didn’t need him.

 

Yuri obviously got in the cast for the Ballet and after that, it was only another couple of days before their departure for Detroit. They flew at night but the trip was over twelve hours long and it was awful. Yuri yelled and complained all the time, earning not few irritated looks from the crew and the other people on his plane. When they arrived they had a couple of days to visit some boring museums and other tourist attractions while adjusting to the different time zone before the night of the show. They visited the Theatre and the Company’s buildings but couldn’t meet with the dancers before the show, so the Director, an annoying Italian man with terrible long hair, promised that they would be holding a celebratory banquet after the performance and that the Bolshoi students would be invited. 

Yuri had to admit that the Theatre was not so bad, even if the Bolshoi was totally better, but he couldn’t care less about visiting places or meeting with the dancers. He only wanted to see the Ballet.

Finally, the night of the show arrived. They were forced to wear elegant clothes, which Yuri hated, and to arrive at the Theatre hours ahead of the scheduled time. When the show started he was so annoyed and angry that he wished he had stayed at home. The dance of the Chorus of fairies was boring, it was true that their style was different, but the Bolshoi’s version was better. It was a total disappointment. He had gone there to learn something useful, not to watch a bad copy of a mediocre Ballet. Then Puck entered the scene and everything changed. His steps were hypnotic. He was so expressive that Yuri couldn’t look away, he was completely caught in the dance. But it was weird, in the second part of the variation, when he was supposed to do a _manèges_ with _grand jetés_ he just didn’t.

‘Why did he change the choreography so much? Isn’t he able to jump?’, Yuri thought.

Then the dancer did jump gracefully and with ease and Yuri was even more confused. Usually, male dancers wanted to show off their strength with massive jumps, they didn’t discard them in favor of other moves. Why was he doing this? And most of all, why was he playing Puck instead of Oberon? Their Oberon was horrible, too full of himself, not in the part at all.

During the interval, Yuri checked out the program they gave him when he entered the Theatre.

“Yuuri Katsuki. He stole my name, that flop of a dancer!” he mumbled to himself. He opened the Google app on his phone and started searching. It looked like he was always in the main cast of the performances of the Detroit Ballet Company and he always had solo _piecés_ , but he seemed to obtain only secondary parts. It puzzled him.

‘I wonder what he would be like if he played the main role for once. I bet he could interpret Oberon better than stupid Victor.’ he thought.

The second part of the show started and the more it progressed, the more Yuri found himself unable to stop watching Puck and hating Oberon instead. When Oberon’s solo came around he muttered what were definitely unpleasant words in Russian under his breath. The boy next to him gazed at him with a questioning look but smiling. He was one of the externals that were currently training at the Bolshoi. Apparently, he had decided to take part in the trip even if he couldn’t do the audition because he was leaving soon. Yuri knew better than to show confidence to those of his kind.

“What do you want?”, he blurted.

The boy motioned him to lower his voice, before answering in a whisper:

“I’m sorry, you seem annoyed by something and I was trying to understand what that could be.”

“Obviously is that idiot dancer. Why is he even playing Oberon? He is awful!”

“He is not so bad, he managed some impressive moves so far. The variation is even more complex than the original.”

“I hate you, too, now. Shut up.”

The boy saddened instantly but didn’t say anything, not wanting to displease the Russian more. Yuri thought that at least he had some sense and brought his attention back to the performance.

After the show finished, Yuri bounced up from his chair and ran off to the hall of the Theatre, where he knew they would sell DVDs with the recordings of the performance, to buy himself one. He saw that the external from before was following him. When Yuri glared at him, the boy blushed guiltily but didn’t leave.

“It’s better if you don’t go around alone,” he explained quickly, to justify himself.

“Fine. I was just buying the DVD of the performance. Not that I liked it, it’s just to study. Our version hasn’t even started and it’s already way better.”

“Ok.”

Yuri checked him out trying to understand if he was being sarcastic or not, but he found that he looked rather serious, so he shrugged and moved towards the desk.

“C-can I buy it for you?” asked the guy, his stern face faltering a little.

“Why? Do you think I won’t be able to do it? Or that I don’t have enough money? I can take care of myself.” replied Yuri, fuming.

“I know that. I knew from the first moment I saw you. I just want to. So, can I or not?”

Yuri thought that there was something odd about that boy, but he didn’t seem to be pitying him or anything like that.

“Ok, whatever. I don’t care.”

The boy smiled and hurried to buy the DVD and give it to Yuri, who just mumbled a ‘thank you’ because he knew he had to say it, but hoping the other wouldn’t hear it. Of course, he heard. Stupid…

“Um, what’s your name?”

“I’m Otabek. Nice to meet you.” he extended his hand and Yuri shook it, before saying goodbye and going back to head towards the celebratory banquet, thinking:

‘Stupid Otabek, then.’

 

When they arrived at the banquet hall, the dancers of the Detroit Ballet Company weren’t there yet, probably they were still changing costumes, so the Russians and the other guests were offered a fruit juice and some disgusting tarts to pass the time while they waited. After a while, Puck entered the room along with another person that Yuri recognized as the soloist that had played Lysander - not that he had noted him or anything, he just happened to have a very good memory. They entered the room as if they had run and Puck seemed to be only half dressed, having the upper part of his costume still on.

“Oi! Name-stealer! You forgot how to dress?” he blurted.

“Uh? Are you talking to me?” said Yuuri, seeing that the boy was looking directly at him but not understanding what he had been called.

“Of course I am, do you see any other Yuri in this room?”

Yuuri was pretty sure that the boy hadn’t called him ‘Yuri’, but he seemed very angry, so he decided not to counter.

At that moment the second part of the boy’s sentence hit him and he looked down to see he was still wearing Puck’s shirt. He blushed deeply and looked accusingly at Phichit who was standing beside him with an amused look on his face.

“Phichit-kun! Why didn’t you stop me from going out like this!”

“I tried, you didn’t listen to me!” Phichit was now giggling openly.

Yuri huffed. 

“Oh, I am sorry. Thank you, I suppose.” Yuuri said, turning to Yuri with a stupid smiling expression and his stupidly big eyes.

“Whatever”, said Yuri, turning his gaze away to hide the shade of pink that was spreading through his face.

While he was starting to walk away he heard Lysander talk to the name-stealer in a low tone:

“The Russians are all here, so I’m afraid he didn’t come with them, you can go change your clothes.”

“I really hoped I could finally meet him but, well, there weren’t many chances he would come to see us.” The other answered.

Yuri didn’t need them to say the name to know who they were talking about. Of course, the name-stealer and his friend would only care about stupid Victor. Everyone did after all. Not that it bothered him or that he was jealous. He tightened his grip on the DVD he was still holding and walked away from the room. He certainly didn’t care about stupid Yuuri.


End file.
